Inside the Star

Harper in China: Ottawa, Beijing to ‘deepen economic ties’

Prime Minister Stephen Harper heads to the manufacturing hub of Guangzhou Friday having bagged a couple of giant pandas for Toronto and Calgary zoos and more: A ream of government-to-government trade agreements.

A waitress pours tea for Laureen Harper as Prime Minister Stephen Harper looks on during a stop at the Yi Wan Ju restaurant in Beijing on Thursday.

By:Tonda MacCharlesOttawa Bureau, Published on Thu Feb 09 2012

BEIJING—Prime Minister Stephen Harper heads to the manufacturing hub of Guangzhou Friday having bagged a couple of giant pandas for Toronto and Calgary zoos and more: A ream of government-to-government trade agreements.

To hear the Chinese tell it, they are the first steps toward an all-out free trade deal.

Or, to hear Harper tell it, they are big moves that will bring greater access and legal protections for Canadian exports and businesses looking to expand or set up shop in China.

But the Canadian government denies that a deal to study ways of “deepening our economic and trade relations” sets Canada on the road to free trade with China.

“We’re not going to get ahead of ourselves,” said International Trade Minister Ed Fast. “Our end game is to deepen our trade relationship in one of our key priority markets.”

Nevertheless it will doubtless kick off a huge debate in Canada.

At a time when many Canadians worry their jobs would not be safe pitted against China’s lower labour costs, Canadian corporate leaders in a fancy Beijing ballroom saw only opportunity ahead.

“I don’t think we’re there yet” on the road to free trade, said Peter Kruyt, a Power Corp. executive who is co-chair of the Canada China Business Council. “But if the discourse is on that, it’s already a big change . . . If you want to organize a free-trade agreement why not do it with a country that’s got growth?”

Amnesty International Canada and the umbrella Canadian Coalition on Human Rights in China warn that growth comes from China’s ability to tap into a vast supply of cheap, human labour through migrant workers, whose rights are restricted and whose advocates and activists “are regularly harassed and restricted.”

They wrote to Harper in an open letter: “Internal migrant workers in China remain one of the most vulnerable groups in the country.

“Health and safety legislation is routinely ignored and accidents covered up,” the coalition said, urging Harper to raise their cause.

Harper will get to see for himself one of the industrial centres — Guangzhou — fuelled by migrant labour when he travels Friday to meet another up-and-coming government figure, Wang Yang, party secretary in Guangdong province.

He listened attentively as Vice Premier Li Keqiang spoke glowingly Thursday of Canada’s decision to diversify trade and Li laid out a bare equation: “Canada is one of the countries with a deep energy and resource reserve. China on the other hand is a stable and reliable consumer market.

“There’s a huge space for us to expand our economic cooperation and trade.”

To which Harper declared: “There is symmetry in our economic needs that you only find with a small number of our trading partners.”

Harper positively basked onstage as he and Li watched the signing of 23 business-to-business commercial agreements worth about $3 billion.

Among the 21 government-to-government deals was the green light for Canadian uranium companies to begin to ship Saskatchewan uranium to China, where Cameco CEO Tim Gitzel said it would fuel some of the 14 nuclear energy reactors in use and grow as another 27 under construction enter operation.

Harper said: “It will generate jobs here at home while contributing to the use of clean, reliable energy in China.”

As with so many of the trade deals that are being touted by Canadian officials as groundbreaking, there was no text on the uranium export agreement.

Other deals were renewals of existing relationships and memoranda of understanding.

Still, Harper appeared to revel in newly strengthened ties that were once strained when he declared he wouldn’t allow “the almighty dollar” to trump human rights in his dealings with China.

Harper and Premier Wen Jiabao agreed to “increase dialogue and exchanges on human rights, on the basis of equality and mutual respect, to promote and protect human rights consistent with the Charter of the United Nations and international human rights instruments.”

It was the only reference to human rights on a day when Canada also scored the other big trophy in the eyes of Canadian zoo-goers, kids and Canadian merchandisers: A pair of giant pandas to be loaned by China to zoos in Toronto and Calgary for a decade of “collaborative research on conservation.”

In the parlance of panda diplomacy, the pandas were a gesture of friendship awarded after two days of face-to-face meetings that resulted in glowing reviews in the Chinese press and a Canadian government delegation giddy with relief.

The cost hasn’t been announced, though billeting pandas tends to run about $1 million a year.

“It’s a very complimentary gesture,” said Peter Harder, president of the Canada-China Business Council. “They value their pandas, pandas are extraordinarily rare, and it’s a way of demonstrating not only hospitality but a close bond and symbolic of what they hope we can do together.”

Harper also highlighted Canadian softwood lumber exports to China on Thursday, ate lunch at a Chinese restaurant and held another business roundtable, this time with Canadian energy and natural resources execs.

More on thestar.com

We value respectful and thoughtful discussion. Readers are encouraged to flag comments that fail to meet the standards outlined in our
Community Code of Conduct.
For further information, including our legal guidelines, please see our full website
Terms and Conditions.